Oblivion
by Julia Russell
Summary: An invisible but deadly force is killing thousands every day. A mysterious organisation hires an old accomplice and Lara Croft to stop it - but she's in enough trouble of her own right now. Please read; I am desperate for feedback!
1. Foreword

Oblivion 

By Julia Russell

This fic has been rated **R** for violence, moderate sexual content and references, language, and themes that I feel might kind of make you want to throw up. I mean, grisly. Nonetheless I have no objections whatsoever to whoever reads this; but it might be safer to keep those under 10 years of age away from it.

Then again, judging from the above criteria, maybe I should stay away too (NOT that I'm under ten, I am happily over that mark).

Disclaimer 

I own Orestes and several other characters I may add to this list later on. Lara Croft and co. is property of Core Design, blah blah blah.

**Dedication** (SHEESH)

As usual, to Clarenova and Constance, from whom I learned many of these swear words. Even though I wouldn't let you guys do beta testing for me (heck, do you even know this exists?) I'm sure you would have (forcibly or no). Etc. Etc. Etc. May find others to dedicate to later. LoL.

Many thanks to… 

No one as of yet. Oh, Tom Clancy. His book, The Andromeda Strain, give me a bunch of ideas, though I'm pretty sure I didn't take any direct, direct, direct references. Can you believe they make you read that book at my age? Hang on. Tom Clancy DID write that book, right?


	2. Prologue

**Author's note:** Chapters will be **very, very, very, very** short, due to my bursts of inspiration that choose to come at the most inconvenient moments. Check my bio if you haven't recognized me yet. I will only update this one if I feel like it. :  P

Finally, this is an R fic, so please, please don't mind too terribly what I've done to everyone – it is ONLY FICTION. Also, many of these medical references are probably untrue – ignore them, please. I have no medical experience whatsoever unless you count binding sprained fingers, washing cuts, putting on band-aids and following the doctor's prescription.

Oh yeah – I was hoping to give this fic a bit of a dark feel – if it's comical or if it actually worked, I beg you, PLEASE email me. PLEASE! I really need response. I'm juliarussell_sin@hotmail.com, you can find this on my bio as well.

Lara does not appear in the prologue.

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Those black, human-sized potato-shaped mounds lying on the road flake in between your fingers – powdery ash. Beneath this burnt shell, a mushy, decomposing kind of paste is crawling with maggots. Flies land every few minutes to lay fresh eggs, and these too will hatch and feed. The foul, reeking smell is everywhere, and you can even sense it when you breathe through your mouth.

Few would imagined these to have started out as what they were – human bodies. 

There must be at least thirty of them, strewn almost ornamentally over the road and pavement, some staring garishly at you from where they are propped up in shop windows with half eaten, bloody eyeballs or empty, decaying sockets. An exceptionally long worm the color of spoilt milk weaves its way through a man's cheek like a needle and thread through embroidery.

Did I say bodies? Oh no. Oh, no, these people were still very much alive.

If their muscles and organs hadn't been chewed up and reduced to mush, they might still have been shrieking and rolling around in pain. They would have flung themselves as their own friends without recognizing them when they sprayed them with tongues of fire in attempts to put them out of their misery rather than cure them – kill them quickly so they wouldn't feel it. What good friends they had. Flame only slowed the silent killers' work. While their lifeless corpses lay on the ground, inside they writhed and screamed, feeling every second of the agony while they were being destroyed from both the inside and out.

They might still even be vomiting blood on the crimson pave, if they still had anything left in their digestive systems – or otherwise. Alternatively the killer could have simply moved itself to the regurgitations and left its ex-host to die in an even slower, more painstaking way. It was really a toss-up.

Strangely enough, just a few streets away, the town was on a high. Glaring disco lights shone vividly in every direction and the streets were packed with people, healthy people. The floor, far from being soaked with human bodily liquids, were soaked with booze – though no doubt some of it had been thrown up too. Full swinging parties lined both sides.

Welcome to the bad part of town.


	3. Chapter one Angels don't fly

Lara Croft pushed her way through the streets of people, but the outfit she had on effectively made her stand out like a neon sign. The angry shouts behind her seemed to be parting the crowd like the Red Sea as her pursuers seemed to draw nearer and nearer. She ducked down a shadowy alleyway, coming close to tripping over some drunken prick stretched out across the pavement but dropping the flashlight in her hand. She swore as she dashed to the right to pick it up. The trees hung low out of people's backyards here, and the jade veils clutched at her skin as she tore past.

It felt like she'd done nothing but run for the past year or so - every muscle screeching in protest as she forced herself on, rushing through the darkness, reaching for cover that simply wouldn't be there. The resigned look in her wild eyes said that. There was nothing to run to, but everything to run from – if they caught her, she was worse than damned. Her breath caught raggedly in her throat as she vaulted a fence at the end and scaled a wall into a more populated road, not unlike the one she had started from. The force from leaping off a railing nearby caused her to fall and she skimmed her knee getting up, her palms stinging. The crowd was thinning down the next stretch but the shouting continued, and she didn't know how much longer she could keep it up…

Lara turned down yet another dark alleyway identical to all the others and suddenly the yelling and footsteps echoing on the pavement died down. She took two steps further and suddenly grimaced as a sharp reek hit her as suddenly as a slap to the face. It made her eyes tear and her breath catch in her chest, but she took pains not to cry out – hoping her pursuers wouldn't think twice. She quickly turned to face behind her lest someone she attack, but no one did. Suddenly her heart seemed to be pounding much harder than before.

She flicked on her torch.

Wide, mangled eyes stared back at her, pus oozing from a bloody concave in the right cheek. The mouth was wrenched open, screaming, at an impossible angle. Minute worms the color of spoilt milk wriggled their way through the nose. The situation wasn't too much greater for the other twenty or so festering human corpses spread grotesquely on the ground.

Lara's heart beat so hard she feared it would just stop. It took every ounce of self- control to stay silent, body tensing with the strain. Now she knew why she hadn't been followed. Strains of the 'plague victims' that the government had called just rumors began to drift half-heartedly through her mind. Rumors…

It had just been three months or so ago when apparently there had been some very mysterious hospital cases reported. People were experiencing terrible pain from the inside, writhing on the ground as if possessed by some very violent demon. Then they doubled up, unable to move or speak, paralyzed with the sheer agony of it all. And doctors at the hospital had been absolutely baffled by the viruses they'd found – or rather, the _lack_ of viruses. The people were by medical standards declared perfectly healthy even as they began to rot from their insides. 

Apart from the people in the shadier circles, however, the public knew nothing of all this. Then again, the current 'public' wasn't a very intelligent sort at the moment. The instant that America had gone corrupt barely two months back, people all over the globe just went crazy. It had been weeks since Lara had seen a building more than five floors high. Every night was a wild orgy of a twisted Mardi Gras – if you had money. If not, you simply sat in some corner and died. It was like that. 

Communism had also taken more than of half the world back already, and other parts who had refused to give in were simply demolished and moved out of the way. The plague rumors, however, continued to come, and if they were only rumors, surely they would be trivial compared to the mass destruction? Yet there was news, of more and more twitching on the ground, flailing and squinting through bloodshot eyes, dying faster and faster. Still doctors could do nothing (besides join them). 

Suddenly a strong light flared up from behind her – men were carrying flaming torches and running towards her. There would be no escape. And there was no way – _no way _– that she was going back.

_There are always choices_, someone had once said. No one had ever said anything about the decency of the choices. 

Lara took a deep breath of the foul air and plowed straight into the mass grave. Though she took care not to step on any corpses directly, the excess decomposing flesh and flies made the ground slippery and Lara tried not to feel nauseated as it squelched beneath her feet. Though the mob had continued, undaunted, several members had given up, turning back and running as far as the cowardly legs would take them. A little further along and the texture took a rapid change for the better – dry ash lined the floor. Not all of it had burned, Lara noted, but the remainder looked squeamishly like flaky skin. This observation cost her a few precious inches and she actually felt a hand swipe at her hair as it streamed out behind her. 

The next bend took her to a place that could only be described as empty. The houses and roads looked almost untouched, as if someone had built them like clay models, never used them, and let dust settle on them. 

The end of the road was a dead one.

Frantically, Lara's eyes skimmed the road for some possible escape route, but none appeared. The houses seemed like the only way left. If she was lucky, one of them might have a back door. She turned into the first one and tried the door. It didn't budge. Exasperated, Lara used all her strength and smashed the window next to it, diving through the gap just as the gang closed in around the corner. It was too late though. They'd seen her.

Lara was breathless and gasping as she got up, wincing at the pain from a rather large cut she'd sustained from her careless entrance. The single bed and table wouldn't offer much cover, but there was another door at the end of the room…

With a sickening crack the door literally burst open in a fashion that could almost be described as shattering. Thunderous footsteps poured through. They had her. They had her this time.

Lara's smaller frame shook as she huddled on a ball on the floor, awaiting her fate. Strong arms suddenly wrenched her up roughly and she screamed…


End file.
